CO129-454 - Acting Governor Claud Severn - 1919 [4-6] — Page 232

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Gr.117

228

Mr. Colliña,

It is a good many years since I was intimately acquainted with Hong Kong matters but I should assume

that the cost of living is still materially higher than in the other Eastern Colonies,

it was so in 1910 and I should suppose that the

general percentage of increase has been about the same

everywhere. if that is so, g 4 of the report is

indisputable truth, It is true that compared with other

places Hong Kong Government Servants probably have an

easy time owing to the smallness of the Colony but that

doesn't make living cheaper and if we employ European

officers we must pay them enough to enable them to live decently. (I reserve my opinion as to whether so many European officers are necessary until i have some experience of the administration. At the present moment I am inclined on general principles to say that they are not).

Before coming to the details of the report 1

wish to put forward a general proposition which I had in mind before I saw this report. For the last 20 years certainly, and probably for many years before that, the

question of the salaries of Hong Kong has been complicated

by the necessity of letting an officer who thinks in sterling know what his pay will be in sterling especially for leave and pension purposes while reconciling sterling payments with a fluctuating dollar, which has

much the same purchasing power whether its exchange value is 1/6d or 3/6d We have tried dollar salaries, sterling

salaries, exchange compensation, sterling salaries paid

at a fancy rate as to 50% and now as to 80% and we have

never really found a solution of the problem. The

reason is that it is insoluble and I advise that we

recognise